The Toll (Arc of a Scythe #3) - Neal Shusterman Page 0,71

circumstances, but seemed miniscule compared to the others.

Mendoza had thrown in the last choice to satisfy the curates for whom less was more. And the Toll, with a stagey, beatific gesture meant to mildly mock the entire process, raised his hand and pointed to the only wrong answer on the test: the abbey. Partially because he knew it was the one Mendoza least wanted, and partially because he kind of liked it.

The abbey, set in a park at the city’s narrow northern tip, began life as a museum designed to look like an ancient monastery. Little did the architects know that they’d be so successful, it would actually become one. The Cloisters, it was called. Greyson had no idea why it was plural; there was only one.

The ancient tapestries that once hung on the walls had been sent to some other museum of mortal-age art and replaced by new tapestries made to look old, which depicted scenes of Tonist religious significance. To look on them, one would think that Tonism had been around for thousands of years.

Greyson had been living here for more than a year now, yet coming home never felt like coming home. Perhaps because he was still the Toll, clothed in those itchy, embroidered vestments. Only when he was alone, in his private suite, could he remove them and be Greyson Tolliver once more. At least to himself. To everyone else he was always the Toll, no matter what he wore.

The staff was told repeatedly not to treat him with reverence, only common respect, but that wasn’t happening. They were all loyal Tonists handpicked for the job, and once in the Toll’s service, they treated him like a god. They would bow low when he passed, and when he told them to stop, they would revel in being chastised. It was a no-win situation. But at least they were better than the zealots—who were becoming so extreme, there was a new name for them: Sibilants. A torturous, distorted sound, unpleasant to all.

Greyson’s only respite from reverence was Sister Astrid, who, in spite of her fervent belief that he was a prophet, didn’t treat him like one. She saw it as her mission, though, to engage him in spiritual conversation and open his heartstrings to the truth of Tonism. There was only so much talk of Universal Harmonies and Sacred Arpeggios he could stand. He wanted to bring some non-Tonists into his inner circle, but Mendoza wouldn’t have it.

“You must be careful who you associate with,” Mendoza insisted. “With scythes increasingly targeting Tonists, we don’t know who we can trust.”

“The Thunderhead knows who I can and can’t trust,” Greyson said, which just annoyed him.

Mendoza never stopped moving. As a monastic curate, he had been quiet and reflective, but he had changed. He had reverted to the marketing guru he had been before becoming a Tonist. “The Tone put me where I was needed, when I was needed,” he once said, then added, “All rejoice!” Although Greyson could never be sure whether he was being genuine when he said that. Even when he ran religious services, his “all rejoice” always seemed to come with a wink.

Mendoza would stay in constant communication with curates around the world by secretly piggybacking on scythedom servers. “They’re the most unregulated, least monitored systems in the world.”

There was something both satisfying and troubling to know that they were using the scythedom’s own servers to carry their secret messages to Tonist curates around the world.

* * *

Greyson’s private suite was a true sanctuary. It was the only place where the Thunderhead could speak aloud and not just through his earpiece. There was a freedom to that more palpable than removing the stiff garments of the Toll. The earpiece he wore in public made the Thunderhead feel like a voice in his head. It only spoke to him aloud when it knew no one else could hear, and when it did, he felt surrounded by it. He was in it, rather than it in him.

“Talk to me,” he said to the Thunderhead as he stretched out on the comfort of his bed—a massive thing constructed specially for him by a follower who made mattresses by hand. Why did people think that just because the Toll was now larger-than-life, everything within his life had to be? The bed was big enough for a small army. Honestly, what did they expect him to do in it? Even on the rare occasions that he had “the company of a